Bottomless Pit!
|written = Alex Hirsch Michael Rianda |storyboards = Matt Braly David Gemmill Alonso Ramirez Ramos |directed = Aaron Springer Joe Pitt |aired = March 1, 2013 |ratings = 3.1 |international = |previous = Boss Mabel |next = The Deep End }} "Bottomless Pit!" is the 14th episode of the first season of Gravity Falls. It premiered on March 1, 2013 on Disney Channel. Official overview While Stan, Dipper, Mabel and Soos are falling in a bottomless pit, they tell stories to pass the time. Synopsis Getting to the Pit The episode begins with Grunkle Stan driving the Mystery Cart with Dipper, Mabel, and Soos inside, to the bottomless pit to dispose of their unwanted items. While Soos fails to comprehend the pit's allegedly bottomless nature, Dipper doubts the existence of a bottomless pit. His skepticism, however, does not stop Stan from throwing down suggestions for improving the Mystery Shack, or Mabel from disposing of love letters from Gideon Gleeful and a box of "personal, mysterious secrets," (which is later found out it contains the Truth Telling Teeth) or Soos from throwing away his shoes and a barbecue. A wind storm suddenly rolls in, and Dipper instructs the others to go back inside, but Stan ignores him and continues to try to throw out the suggestion cards. Worried, the others hold onto him, but they end up falling down the pit along with him. Gompers then passes by before the theme song begins. In the pit, the group screams for a time, ending with Soos asking if anyone wants to scream some more. Dipper then asks where they are. Mabel lights up a green glow-stick to look around and replies that it looks like they are somewhere that looks like it's nowhere. Stan reasons that they will be stuck in the pit for some time and attempts a card trick to entertain the others and Mabel cheers even after he fails. Soos suggests that they tell stories to pass the time, and Dipper, angry with his uncle, opts to tell one about his irritation with Stan but settles for a story called "Voice Over" when Mabel encourages him to do better. Voice Over Mabel, Soos, and Wendy are playing a variant of spin the bottle called "spin the pig," in which they spin Waddles and whomever his face points at, he or she must kiss him. When the pig points to Stan, who is sitting on the porch nearby, Mabel asks him if he has ever kissed a pig, and Stan says he's not going to answer that. Dipper abruptly enters in a panic, believing that a snake bit him and that he must be taken to a hospital stat. Unfortunately, his voice cracks at the end of his exclamation, consequently not being taken seriously by Stan and the others, who explain that it is hard to focus on the seriousness of the situation with Dipper's voice frequently cracking. They then play a techno remix of Dipper's voice cracking, which irritates and embarrasses him into taking the tape and storming off. As Dipper walks through town, he is met by Old Man McGucket, who says that he may be able to help Dipper and his problem. At the Gravity Falls Junkyard McGucket explains that he has been experimenting with a voice-altering formula, due to his frightening voice that he exhibits by scaring a young child, and gives Dipper a sample of the formula. Dipper drinks it and heads back to the Shack, McGucket saying that Dipper will sound like a new man if he survives as he does so. The next morning, Dipper awakes and discovers his new, deeper voice which he tries out and shows to Mabel. His sister does not react as he expected, however, and, thinking Dipper's body is being inhabited by a "body-switching warlock", hits her brother with a golf club. Dipper explains that he is indeed her brother, albeit with a different voice tone, and goes on to describe the potential benefits he sees, such as, prank calls. His sister believes it to be a change for the worse, and Soos reacts in manner similar to Mabel upon hearing Dipper's new tone, telling the tourists present in the gift shop to flee, and hitting Dipper on the head with a broom, screaming that Dipper must be killed with fire. Upset by Mabel's and Soos' responses, Dipper sets out to find his uncle, whom he believes will appreciate his new voice and goes into town to find him. As he passes Skull Fracture, he is met by Tats, who recognizes Dipper's voice as the one who prank-called him, and assembles a group of bikers to chase after him. Dipper ducks into the dump to scold Old Man McGucket about what a disaster his invention is, and McGucket explains that Dipper sounds so odd because he gave Dipper the wrong formula (professional commercial voice over). McGucket goes on to say that Dipper would have reverted to his old voice come sundown, and Dipper, after listening to the appreciation his friends express for the uniqueness of his voice at the end of the remix, resolves that he likes his own voice, even if it is ridiculous. Back at the Shack, Dipper shows Mabel and Soos that he is back to normal, which relieves them, and he reveals that he dumped the alternative, permanent voice formula into his uncle's coffee. Grunkle Stan then walks in with an obnoxious, female voice and is laughed at by the others, which he cannot understand. Soos' Really Great Pinball Story (Is That A Good Title? Do They Have To Be Puns Or Whatever?) Soos is excited that he may get the high score after four years of trying, while playing a creepy old game of pinball with the twins cheering him on. After some consideration and annoyance, Soos takes up Dipper's suggestion to turn tilt the game, which results in Soos achieving his goal. The pinball machine, however, recognizes that he cheated and zaps Soos and the twins into the game in a flash of green lightning. After they play around in the machine for a while, the three are confronted by the talking cowboy skull in the machine, who attempts to punish them for breaking the rules by killing them. They plan to escape by manually turning off the game from inside, with Mabel and Dipper distracting the cowboy skull by jumping up and down and making annoying noises, but are hindered as Soos is distracted by a picture of a wench he finds attractive. Dipper reminds Soos to focus, and the twins carry out their role in the plan while Soos rides a mine cart into and through the inner mechanisms of the machine. When the twins check on Soos, they find that he is reluctant to turn off the game, as it will permanently erase all data, including his high score, which he views as his greatest accomplishment. The twins try to reason with Soos and are interrupted when the cowboy skull discovers their whereabouts and attempts to finish them off. However, Soos has a change of heart and shuts off the game before he can do so. Soos, Dipper, and Mabel wake up outside of the machine where Dipper feels sorry for Soos having to lose his high score. Soos then tells him it's okay because he now has a new life accomplishment: saving the twins' lives. He then asks if they think that the pinball wench will call him. Back in the pit, Stan decides to tell a story of his own, one that he thinks is much better than what he's heard so far. Grunkle Stan Wins the Football Bowl Stan heads to the end of a football field and scores the winning touchdown. He is thanked by a group of football players for teaching them that old people are incredibly useful. Stan then receives a trophy from a woman he finds to be beautiful, and says that he could not have done it with his robotic sidekick and own invention, Footbot. Everyone cheers for Stan, and the story ends. Soos, Dipper, and Mabel boo his story but Stan believes it was good. Mabel claims she will tell a better story, which is called "Trooth Ache." Trooth Ache The Pines are hanging around the Stanmobile as they oversee Manly Dan unload a bear, which Stan plans to teach to drive, for an attraction at the Mystery Shack. On the road, the bear drives very poorly as Stan coaches it with false driving tips, and the police pull him over. When Sheriff Blubs demands an explanation as to why a bear is driving Stan's car, he dishonestly replies that his physician, "Dr. Medicine," assigned him a seeing-eye bear to drive him to the hospital in case of an emergency, and the Sheriff pardons him. Stan then tells the bear "To the hospital, Honeypants!" and the bear drives them away. Later at the Shack, Stan spray-paints rocks gold to sell to unsuspecting customers as authentic gold nuggets, and Mabel asks him why he lied to the policemen. Stan makes the excuse that by his age, one learns to "bend the truth a bit for the greater good," which he shows by lying to Dipper about Soos possibly knowing where Dipper's plate of spaghetti (which Stan was eating) is, much to Mabel's disgust. Up in the attic, Mabel talks to Waddles about Stan's lying problem and decides to consult Journal 3 about a possible solution for her uncle's dishonesty. She comes across information about a set of truth-telling teeth that render it impossible for the wearer to lie, and sets out to find them. In the middle of the night, she creeps into Grunkle Stan's bedroom and implants the truth teeth, which shine golden in Stan's mouth. She then wakes him up to test out the teeth. To her satisfaction, the teeth work, and Stan, not totally getting that something is wrong, goes back to sleep. Mabel tells Dipper what she did at the breakfast table the next morning, and, though he initially thinks it to be a horrible idea, though he experiments to see if Stan will tell the truth, and both twins are disturbed with a set of truths their uncle reveals, such as that he does not wash his hands after using the bathroom. Stan's truth telling soon grows out of hand and without a filter, going to the extent of insulting a customer's appearance, writing that he commits massive tax fraud on a tax form, scaring the twins with a talk about death, and so forth. Stan's boundless honesty quickly grows to annoy the twins, and nearly gets him arrested as he admits to several crimes when Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland arrive to interrogate him about his seeing-eye bear and the nonexistence of Dr. Medicine. Mabel reluctantly lies to cover for her uncle, saying that he is secretly a crime fiction author and was telling them about a character in his upcoming book, and sends the officers away. Mabel is shocked at herself for lying, but Dipper says it was for the greater good, and Stan, still unable to fib, calls the police station to admit to tax fraud before the twins tackle him to stop him. Mabel then removes the teeth from Stan's mouth and disposes of them, along with a box full of other magical items, into the pit, saying she never saw the box again, but then spots it in the pit. Additionally, Soos finds the shoes he got rid of earlier in the episode. Back to Reality Dipper then tells Mabel that they already know that story, as it just happened to them and they are currently living through it, which causes Soos to ask how the story ends. Dipper then spots a bright light at the end of the tunnel, and he and the others get closer and closer while screaming. Eventually they finally fall through it, however the group comes out at the top of the pit, right where they fell in, and learn that virtually no time has passed. Dipper concludes the bottomless pit is a wormhole of some sort, to which the others agree. When Stan points out that it is unlikely anyone will believe them, Mabel figures that this is something that they should just keep to themselves, which the others agree to. Stan proceeds to lean on the sign for the pit and falls back in when it breaks, but this does not worry the others, as he will eventually come right back. In the credits, a bored Stan is seen falling down the pit, with a grumpy face, sighing and muttering, "This is stupid!" Credits * Written by: ** Alex Hirsch ** Michael Rianda * Directed by: ** Aaron Springer ** Joe Pitt * Storyboards by: ** Matt Braly ** David Gemmill ** Alonso Ramirez Ramos * With the Voice Talents of: ** Kristen Schaal as Mabel Pines ** Jason Ritter as Dipper Pines ** Alex Hirsch as Grunkle Stan and Soos Ramirez ** Linda Cardellini as Wendy Corduroy ** John DiMaggio as Manly Dan ** Keith Ferguson as Deputy Durland ** A. Smith Harrison as Dipper Pines (deep voice) ** Kevin Michael Richardson as Sheriff Blubs * Additional Voices: ** Grey DeLisle-Griffin as Stan's female voice ** Keith Ferguson ** Alex Hirsch as Old Man McGucket ** Kevin Michael Richardson - Tats ** John DiMaggio as Cowboy Skeleton inside Tumbleweed Terror (uncredited) ** Dee Bradley Baker as Waddles (uncredited) * Casting by: ** Sara Goldberg Production notes Character revelations *Deputy Durland is illiterate. *Stan wears dentures. Series continuity *In Dipper's "Voice Over" part of the episode, the change to $200 on the price sign in the Mystery Shack from "Boss Mabel" still remains intact. * Stan now has a new fez, as Gompers presumably ate his original in the previous episode. * Dipper mentions Old Man McGucket's robot nearly killing him in "The Legend of the Gobblewonker." *Mr. Poolcheck from "The Deep End" appears inside Skull Fracture. *The Shred Pal, first seen in "Boss Mabel," makes a reappearance. *When Stan confesses his crimes to the police, he mentions that he has been parking in handicapped spaces, which he was seen doing in "Summerween." *Deputy Durland cannot read, confirming Mabel's suspicions in "Irrational Treasure." Songs featured *"Dipper's Voice Remix" Trivia * Viewership: This episode was watched by 3.095 million viewers on its premier night. *Promotional artwork for Gravity Falls' pilot showed Dipper, Mabel and Stan falling into a bottomless pit similar to the one in this episode. *As of this episode, the design of Stan's fez has been retconned. The new design has a dot put in the "fish's" mouth and the "fish" body changed from an arc to a circle missing a wedge (similar to Pac-Man). The opening sequence has also been changed to include this new design, and flashbacks to previous episodes in episodes after this one use the new design. *The story titles are as follows: "Voice Over," "Soos' Really Great Pinball Story (Is That a Good Title? Do They Have To Be Puns Or Whatever?)," "Grunkle Stan Wins The Football Bowl," and "Trooth Ache." *It is revealed that Gideon Gleeful has been sending Mabel love letters. *During Mabel's story, the Pines family watch a caricature of Alex Hirsch riding a unicycle and juggling while surrounded by alligators on television. *Stan is revealed to having committed tax fraud, smuggling endangered animals over borders, and faking doctor's notes. *In Mabel's story, "Trooth Ache," she mentions Dipper's journal, which Stan isn't supposed to know about. It is revealed in "Gideon Rises" that he is aware of the journal's existence. Cryptogram *The cryptogram in the end credits reads "14-5-24-20 21-16: "6-15-15-20-2-15-20 20-23-15: 7-18-21-14-11-12-5'19 7-18-5-22-5-14-7-5."" Once decoded it reads: "NEXT UP: "FOOTBOT TWO: GRUNKLE'S GREVENGE."" **''Note: this is the first use of the A1Z26 cipher.'' de:Das Loch ohne Boden es:¡Pozo sin Fondo! ru:Бездонная яма! pt-br:w:c:pt-br.umveraodemisterios:O Poço Sem Fim bg:Бездънна яма! Category:Episodes Category:Season 1 episodes Category:Episodes animated by Rough Draft Korea